Staff File photoThe Jasper County Library is seen in this file photo.JASPER, Tenn. – The Jasper Public Library has been in desperate need of storage room for years, and now there may be a way to get it.
Library Director Carolyn Stewart said she discovered at a recent regional directors meeting that it might be possible to pay for a library expansion through a state grant program.
“The state will give us a $100,000 matching grant,” she said. “So we’re going to get our friends going again and have fundraisers to try to raise money to do this.”
The estimated cost of the much-needed expansion is between $250,000 and $300,000, so the library will have to raise at least $150,000 on its own to get the grant funds.
“We definitely have the land to do that,” Alderman Steve Looney said. “I say go for it.”
When the Jasper Board of Mayor and Aldermen met this month, Stewart asked jokingly if the board would like to match the grant money with city funds, even though the board had just voted to raise the property tax rate by 10 cents to pay for nearly $400,000 in needed replacement equipment.
“I’ll donate a little – very little,” Looney replied with a laugh. “I’ve got very little to donate.”
Stewart said there is no deadline to raise the money needed to match the grant.
“[An expansion] would give us what we need,” she said. “We can’t apply for the grant until we have the [matching] money anyway, so we’re going to start.”
During the library’s first day of its summer reading program in June, Stewart said, 416 people came to the cramped facility and checked out nearly 900 items.
Mayor Paul Evans said city workers would begin sprucing up the area around the library soon by removing several trees to make way for a new sidewalk that will lead through the downtown area.
He said he wished the library’s staff luck in its quest for the grant.
“I think [the library] will have a lot of people working toward it,” Evans said.
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.